Emissions standards vote stalls ahead of European Parliament session

An effort to derail a controversial decision on new standards for diesel cars ran into political resistance, with sources telling POLITICO that a vote in the European Parliament on the issue will be postponed.

MEPs were scheduled to vote during next week’s plenary session on whether to object to an October decision by EU country experts giving diesel carmakers more time and leeway to comply with new EU nitrous oxide emissions tests.

But that vote will likely be delayed to next month after the European Parliament’s two biggest political groups, the European People’s Party and the Socialists and Democrats, agreed on a postponement. Final confirmation will be made public Thursday after a meeting of political group leaders, when the agenda for next week’s plenary session in Strasbourg will be finalized.

The battle over the postponement is just one part of a larger fight over the Parliament’s response to the diesel standards.

Cars covered by the new standards would be able to emit twice as much NOx as in the regulations in force until 2017, with the permitted overshoot falling to 50 percent by 2020. The Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles’ decision watered down an earlier European Commission proposal, but the Commission ended up backing the weaker standards as the alternative was no revamping of regulations at all.

Five political groups, including the Socialists and the Greens but not the EPP, drafted a formal objection to the decision in December, calling for the Parliament to use its power to kill it.

“There are clear reasons why the European Parliament has put forward a formal rejection — because standards are being weakened by a technical committee,” said Bas Eickhout, a Dutch Green MEP.

But the generally pro-business EPP didn’t want to go that far, warning it would be difficult to come up with new standards if the decision was overturned.

A postponement would “allow us to reject the objection and to send a stronger signal to the Commission to have an ambitious framework for [real-driving emissions] tests post 2020,” Françoise Grossetête, a French EPP MEP and vice-president of the group, said in a statement.

The Socialists initially also denounced the emissions tests decision, calling it an example of the auto industry’s power in Brussels. But several officials told POLITICO clear divisions have arisen between various national delegations. MEPs from countries such as Italy, Spain and Germany, where there are large car industries, generally don’t want the objection to go forward.

Several sources said Matthias Groote, a German Socialist MEP from the same region as Volkswagen’s headquarters, was pushing for a postponement of the vote. He had no comment.

The Commission is also expected to come forward in early February with new legislative proposals to strengthen the approval and surveillance systems for new cars. Brussels is seeking more oversight over how national authorities control and monitor automobile emissions.

“It might be a possibility that the Commission comes with changes and other compromises to avoid an adopted objection,” said Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, a Dutch Liberal MEP, who argued that the postponement was “not necessary.”